Page 34 of Merciless Prince

After Cori and I shared a hearty breakfast at our favorite Italian café in Bellingham earlier, we’d made an impromptu decision to hire a car and drive out to the lake for an early-morning hike. Cori knew I’d wanted to visit the place ever since I wrote my history paper on it, because it held some of the prettiest scenery in this region. I also loved the idea of knowing there was a ghost town only a few hundred yards away—the drowned piece of history that used to be Cochrane.

“You don’t even need filters for this picture,” I said, handing the phone back to Cori. “Everything around you is gorgeous enough already. I mean, look at these leaves.”

“True.” She picked up a red maple leaf and twirled it around in her hand. Then she tossed it down on the boulder and stood up. “Let’s keep going.”

We trudged up the incline on our right, which took us on a winding trail around the eastern part of the lake. The morning air smelled crisp and biting, and for several minutes, the only sound around us was dead leaves crunching underfoot.

A branch suddenly snapped loudly somewhere on my right. I froze and snapped my gaze to the woods beyond the trail. “Did you hear that?”

Cori nodded. “It was probably a deer.”

Another branch suddenly snapped. The back of my neck prickled with the feeling of being watched, and a now-familiar feeling of paranoia began to thrum in my chest.

“Are there even deer out here?” I asked in a low voice. The sun was still bright in the sky, but I felt a sense of encroaching darkness all the same.

“Of course there are. They’re everywhere!” Cori replied. “Why? What’s wrong?”

I gave her a weak smile. “I guess Leah got in my head about this place. Remember how she kept telling us it was haunted and that hikers always disappear from the area?”

“Oh, that’s right.” Cori laughed and took my arm. “Come on, let’s keep going before we become the next victims of the Bellingham Triangle.”

I laughed with her and continued up the trail.

“Are you nervous about going back to campus in a few hours?” Cori asked. I knew she’d wanted to ask the question all morning, but she was obviously worried that it would put me in a bad mood all over again.

I gave her another weak smile. “A bit. But you’re right. I need to get back into it and stop feeling sorry for myself. Every actor screws up at some point.”

“Exactly. Did you know Jennifer Doppler was actually fired from the first movie she ever booked? Now she’s an A-lister.”

“Oh, wow. I’ve never heard that before.” I paused for a beat before going on. “There’s actually something I need to talk to you about. It’s kind of related to the little breakdown I’ve been going through.”

“Oh?”

“We should probably sit down,” I said. “It might shock you.”

Cori nodded, looking totally unfazed. “It looks like there’s a picnic spot up there,” she replied, pointing to the left. “I bet it overlooks the lake, just like that boulder from before.”

“Cool. We’ll sit there, then.”

We lapsed into silence as we walked up to the picnic spot. Cori was right—it overlooked Mirror Lake in all its autumnal splendor, providing the perfect background for several more Instagram shots.

When she was finally done with her phone, she came and sat down next to me. “So what’s this big shocking thing you have to tell me?”

I chewed my bottom lip. “I’m honestly not sure where to start.”

“The beginning is usually a good place,” she said, playfully poking me.

“Yeah.” I gave her a tight smile. “So… I probably should’ve told you about these things when they happened. But I kept rationalizing it all away. I convinced myself that the first thing was a prank. Then with the second thing, I thou—”

“Wait, slow down.” Cori lifted a palm. “What was the first thing?”

I let out a sigh. “On our very first day at Bellingham, I found a message written on my bathroom mirror in red lipstick. It said: ‘I found you’.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. I thought it was just a prank someone decided to play because they knew an unsuspecting freshman was taking that dorm. So I cleaned it up, got a new door code, and never mentioned it to anyone.”

Cori nodded slowly. “Right.”